Mandate

Speakers Bureau Mandate

The primary role of the LHCb Speakers Bureau (SB) is to ensure that LHCb is well represented at international conferences and to manage the assignment of LHCb speakers for all LHCb talks given at international conferences. For the purpose of this document, the term ‘International Conferences’ denotes conferences, symposiums, workshops, schools, etc. with an international organizing committee and/or international participation, as well as seminars at major particle-physics laboratories.

The specific tasks of the SB comprise the following:

• To provide a single contact point for conference organizers with LHCb and to participate in planning conferences and talks as needed;
• To make a coherent and active effort in seeking optimal exposure of LHCb through a prominent presence in relevant conferences, workshops and schools;
• To make sure that talks are shared in a fair way among the LHCb collaborators;
• To ensure that talks are of highest quality and use approved and up-to-date material available through the Web;
• To maintain a record of talks given and ensure that the material shown is accessible to the LHCb collaboration.

The SB is responsible for the assignment of talks on LHCb physics topics and for general talks on the LHCb detector at international conferences.  Personal invitations at international conferences for talks on LHCb physics or overview talks having a large LHCb component should not be accepted by members of the LHCb collaboration without prior approval of the SB. However, in such cases the SB does take into account the preferences expressed by the organizing committees.  

The SB is not responsible for:

• Stand-alone seminars given on the basis of a personal invitation;
• Talks at events at regional level, involving participants from one or a limited group of states, which are under the responsibility of the relevant institute leaders;
• Talks on specific instrumentation topics, which are under the responsibility of the relevant subsystem projects.

However, participants in such events should inform the SB Chair, before they accept an invitation to present talks on LHCb physics. The final decision whether the event in question is under the responsibility of the SB is taken by the SB chair.

Material (slides and posters)

All material presented at international conferences will have been approved within the collaboration, and its status will be clearly indicated (e.g. ‘LHCb preliminary’). To facilitate talk preparation the approved material will be available from repositories maintained under the direction of the Physics Coordinator and, when related to sub-detector or computing performance, the sub-system Project Leaders. In certain circumstances seminars and talks at regional level may include other material, for example personal results. In these cases the decision to include unapproved material is left to the judgment of the responsible group leader. All such material will be marked ‘LHCb unofficial’. Rules and Guidelines for Presentations and Posters are available in this Speaker's Bureau page, click HERE to access.

Choice of speakers

In the choice of speakers, the SB takes into account the following considerations:

• Appropriate expertise and background;
• Fair distribution of talks among the members of the collaboration;
• Recognition of individuals making important contributions to LHCb in terms of physics analysis, detector operation and service work;
• When appropriate, other factors such as the career needs of colleagues, or particular regional considerations.

To optimize the choice of speakers in accordance with the above criteria, the SB will solicit suggestions from the Physics Coordinator, Working Group Conveners and Team Leaders.

Rehearsals

The Physics Coordinator and SB will organize public rehearsals for all talks assigned by the SB, in order that the contents can be approved, and to ensure a consistently high quality of presentation. The appropriate working group convener should endorse the slides and/or take part in the rehearsal.

Rehearsals will be announced to the collaboration and the transparencies posted on the web to encourage feedback from the LHCb collaborators. The SB would like to emphasize the desirability of organizing rehearsals for all talks, in order to ensure the highest possible quality of presentation, and to remind individuals, group and project leaders of their responsibility in this matter.

The procedure described above also applies to posters:  the SB should approve the submission of posters and review their content before submission.

Web-site posting, proceedings

All speakers are invited to send their transparencies and posters to the LHCb Secretariat to have them publicly available through the Web. This is mandatory for all presentation on behalf of LHCb.

Conference proceedings contributions should be submitted to the relevant Project Leader or Coordinator for approval: the Project Leader for contributions concerning a sub-system project, the Physics Coordinator for contributions concerning physics results. Authors should bear in mind that the review process will take some time, and should submit their draft at least one week before the deadline.

Input to the SB from the Collaboration

To facilitate and optimize the work of the SB, group leaders, project leaders and individual collaborators are invited to:

• Inform us about forthcoming conferences etc. that they consider suitable for an LHCb contribution;
• Inform us as soon as possible of their interest in giving a presentation at conferences etc. and/or invitations for giving such a presentation;
• Inform us of presentations concerning LHCb sub-detectors or computing, and talks given as stand-alone seminars, as we would like to have a complete picture of the LHCb reach in the community;
• Signal colleagues who need international exposure;
• Make sure that talks are properly prepared, using approved and up-to-date material available through the Web and with a rehearsal as a standard procedure.